Thursday, March 17, 2011

The activity went really well. Partially because I did a better job facilitating, but also because my class is already comfortable with me, with each other, and with doing science.

I was able to stick to my time schedule. I was able to facilitate well. Writing down ideas on the board help immensely. We laughed a lot.

Here are the ideas and questions we generated:

What do we mean by color? - primary colors, crayon colors, secondary colors?

Where is brown? Is it there? Isn't brown from mixing colors?

If white light has all colors, why don't we experience seeing all the colors when we see white light?

Is this question being asked to like a scientist or like an artist? It seems like that would matter

What about black? Is black a color? It seems like its the absence of color? But then again, there are black crayons.

What about neon colors? Are they in the rainbow? What makes something neon?

Doesn't a rainbow have all the light colors, because it breaks it up like a prism.

Isn't purelight ROYGBIV?

In ROYGBIV, Yellow + Blue = Green, and that makes sense because green is between yellow and blue. But Blue + Red = Purple doesn't make sense because violet is on the end, not in between red and blue.

What about a blind person? Would they just see the rainbow in grays? Does that mean gray is in the rainbow?

Can you be underneath a rainbow? Can you see a rainbow from above? Yes, I've seen rainbows from above

What about double rainbows? How does that work?

When people look at a rainbow from different angles, can they all see it? If so, do they all see the same rainbow?

When you mix paint colors you get poopy brown, but when you mix all the light you get white light. Why?

Absorbance vs transmission? Doesn't that matter?

How do we see? Do we see what's reflected or what's absorbed?

What's a shade? Are shades in the rainbow? Can rainbows come in different shades? Would the rainbow be a lighter shade on a sunnier day? Would pollution effect the color of the rainbow? Isn't a shade like when you add white to it.

What is the wave length of brown? If we know that, we would know where it goes in the rainbow

Since rainbow is the diffraction of light through water? Does the color of the rainbow depend upon properties of water?

Is pink in the rainbow?

Don't we see color because we had rods in our eyes?

How does the brain interpret color?

Can a color blind person use 3D glasses?

How do 3d glasses work? Old vs New ones?

How does turning a color photo into a black-and-white photo work? How does black and white TV decide to make colors into different shades of gray?

How does gray work? If white is all the colors, and black is no colors? What why does having less of "everything" look gray?

Does needing glasses to see influence the experience of seeing color?

Does my "anti-glare" glasses that look blue-ish change my experience of color? Like more blue? Or does my brain correct for that over time? We've heard that when you wearupside down glasses you're brain corrects for the flip. Would it correct for color, too?

Can you create colors that don't exist yet?

Turquoise - it seems like it should be a mix of blue and green, and therefore be in between blue and green. But it doesn't look like right. It looks like a lighter shade. Which raises the question again of "are shades in the rainbow?"

Red-violet seems like it can't be in the rainbow because red and violet aren't next to each other. But we can see red violet. What if we could bend the rainbow in a circle? Would we get red-violet?

Red-violet is like the color of a plum. So it must be a color, because it exists. If it exists, does it have to be in the rainbow?

It seems like white and black aren't in the rainbow, and therefore gray can't be in the rainbow.

If brown has a frequency it's in the rainbow, if not then it's not in the rainbow.

Afterwards we talked about three questions:

What makes a science conversation interesting to you?

What helps in a science class to keep a science conversation interesting? (What did we do as a group? What did Brian do as a teacher? What features of the lesson helped?)

What's something from the reading on argumentation that relates to our activity together?

This went well also. But not as well as I would have liked. I think my students wanted to keep talking about colors, so it was kind of a drag to stop and talk about teaching. ;)

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

I am currently teaching a 1-credit "science teaching seminar" for ten undergraduate science majors, each serving as a learning assistant for a different university science course in chemistry or physics. This week, I'll be running the "Are all the colors in the rainbow?" question on the heels of a reading on talk and argumentation in the science classroom. The focus of the reading is on making thinking visible in the classroom.

I hope to do the rainbow activity and then, afterward, use that activity as the focus of a conversation on argumentation in the classroom. I also hope to model for them a few specific strategies for facilitating classroom discussion that are mentioned in the paper.

Here's the new plan:

1. Students do a five minute free write on the question, "Are all the colors in the rainbow?"

2. Students share their ideas with a partner (5 minutes):

I circulate, listen, praise their ideas and questions, and probe for specificity, explanations, and evidence when appropriate.

3. Whole class discussion (15 minutes)

My goal is to write all the ideas on the board and to model for them a few of the following strategies:

Wait-time...

Asking for agreement, "Does anyone want to agree or disagree with what that?"

Asking for additions, "Does anyone want to add to what so-and-so just said?"

Requesting explanation, "Why do you think that? What made you think that?"

Re-voicing, "It sounds like you are saying..."

Asking for restatement, "Does someone think they can repeat what so-and-on said in their own words?"

I want to end the rdiscussion by valuing the questions that have come up. I also want to point out that some interesting examples have come up, and that I think we can make progress with our questions by having everyone to scrutinize closely some of our interesting examples.

4. Students go back to working with partner (10 minutes):

I pass a pack of crayola colors to each group and sort into three categories:

Yes, in the rainbow. For all the colors that are in, sort them into rainbow order. Explain

No, not in the rainbow. It not in the rainbow, explain why it's not in the rainbow.

Unsure or undecided. Explain why you are unsure. What arguments do you have either way?

5. Come back as a class. Have each group discuss a color of their choice.

Changes to the Lesson Structure

#4 on the list is modified from how we ran it in the workshop. It is now more structured and focused by passing on the crayola colors that we think will drive further discussion. It also allows the whole class to focus on a common set of colors, rather than each group doing something different. It also temporarily suspends consideration of "what counts as a color?", because I am tacitly asserting that each of these crayola colors has to be considered. While we need to return to the question, I think it's valuable to close some questions so we make progress on others.

My Goals for Better Facilitation

Stick to my time-line, or at least consciously not-stick to it. Last time, I was always surprised by how much time everything took, and often realized that I let the conversation go too long. I shouldn't be caught off-guard like that. Maybe I need a watch.

Model strategies with deliberate intent. Benedikt said in the Friday's morning workshop session I covered almost all of the facilitation strategies listed above, while in the afternoon session I hit maybe one or two. That's a big difference! Glad I had Benedikt to call me out on that.

Write down all their ideas and questions on the board during discussion. I think it's a mistake not do it, because doing so contributes to "valuing" participants ideas and questions rather than answers.

I would not suggest trying to read the whole book quickly and then setting it aside hoping that its wisdom infuses into your life. Rather, I would suggest reading just one chapter and then go about trying out a few of the strategies. Monitor your interactions by journaling, blogging, whatever. Then once you've got it down, read some more and try out some more strategies.

At the end of the day, we don't learn by reading, but through the work we do by practice and reflection. This book has some great ideas for becoming a better listener in the classroom, but also a better listener in life.

Student groups each get copies of pages taken from six actual scientists notebooks (Darwin, Einstein, Pauling, etc) such as the picture shown below

Students work in groups to write down things they notice on whiteboards. There are some guiding questions such, "What do pages look like?", "What is the writing style?", "What's similar and different across the examples?"

Teacher opens the discussion to whole class and jots down everything on the board

Teacher shifts conversations from "What do we notice?" to "What are science notebooks for?" Leslie suggests you might say something like this

"This is a great list of observations. What do these observations tell us about what a scientistʼs notebook is for? What is the purpose of them? Who reads them?"

"It seems that we are now in general agreement that the purpose of scientistsʼ notebooks is _______________. As I mentioned before, you will need to keep a notebook in this class and I want your notebooks to be modeled after a scientistʼs notebook. What should be the purpose of notebooks in this class? What kinds of things are reasonable to expect from yourselves in creating a quality notebook?

Once we have a list we can all agree to, I will use your list to generate a set of grading criteria for your notebooks for this semester."

Teachers write up a rubric based on what the students bring up. Here's an example Leslie shares with us

If you want to see some examples of the kind of science notebooks her students generate you can see a photo gallery here.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Here, Ellen has laid down the challenge of coming up with a good chemistry question–one that will stimulate interesting discussions like the rainbow question . So I'm giving that challenge to all of us.

If you're reading this, consider doing one of the following in the comments:

Let us know a good chemistry question you or a colleague has used

Brainstorm one or two possible questions (just throw 'em out there, see if they stick)

Toss out some topic areas that you think might be a rich possibility, and say why

Contribute a question about chemistry that has intrigued you personally

Suggest a demonstration, situation, or phenomena that might induce a good question

Suggest some essential features of a good chemistry question

React to someone else's contribution

Invite a colleague or friend to contribute

To help maybe start us off, here is a chemistry-related question over at dy/dan that led me and several of my colleagues to dig in for a few hours. My office white board is full of drawings, equations, arithmetic, etc. If you wanna know how that question might go in a high school classroom, there's a gallery of student whiteboards about the question over at Newton's Minions.